Half Empty
by Fictatious
Summary: In the aching loneliness left in the wake of their Yamis' departure, Yuugi and Ryou find a coping mechanism in each other.


Mom was at work. Grandpa was in the shop. Yuugi was lying on his bed. And Ryou was on top of him.

They found themselves like this more and more often lately, at least three times a week, and whenever one of them had a particularly bad day. It had become a comforting routine, dulling the ache of loneliness, the broken incompleteness, though not really able to alleviate it. Yuugi's mind was refusing to switch off today, being too analytical to let himself drift into a semi-conscious haze focused on the feeling of Ryou's lips and teeth on his neck.

When had he started thinking of him as 'Ryou' instead of 'Bakura-kun'? Yuugi didn't call him that in front of their friends or in public, or really anywhere outside of a bedroom, but in his mind there had occurred that subtle shift in his friend's identity somewhere along the line. It hardly seemed like a significant change to their level of intimacy, compared to what they were doing now, but it struck Yuugi as odd that he couldn't remember when it had happened.

"... What's wrong?" Ryou whispered, his mouth drawing away from Yuugi's throat slightly and hands stilling against his ribs.

"... My brain won't shut up," Yuugi answered, shaking his head a little. "... I had another dream last night... It's... been bugging me."

Ryou nodded, his cheek brushing Yuugi's ear. "Do you want to talk?"

"No," Yuugi shook his head again and closing his eyes to erase the world. "... I don't want to think."

Ryou took that as a cue, returning his lips to Yuugi's neck, sucking more insistently at the sensitive skin, and sliding a hand under Yuugi's thigh to lift it around his hip as he pressed his own against Yuugi's groin and started to grind slowly against him. Yuugi panted, wrapping one arm behind Ryou's neck and laying the other against the arm Ryou was supporting his weight on, hand cupping loosely over his shoulder.

Ryou shifted and brought his mouth against Yuugi's, initiating a deep kiss before sitting up a little, shifting his weight back onto his lower-body and moving his hands to pull Yuugi's shirt up and off. Yuugi raised his arms and twisted his head a little to squirm out of the narrow neck and absently watched the garment fall to the carpet. Ryou leaned down and kissed at Yuugi's chest while his hands were unbuckling Yuugi's belt and pulling it free to discard on the floor as well.

He moaned softly as Ryou slid a hand into his pants and then started to pant faster when Ryou pealed the fabric away from his hips and started stroking him. A few minutes later he was moaning repeatedly from the heat of Ryou's mouth and that impossible way he could open his throat and take in Yuugi's entire erection. The lingering melancholy inspired by the previous night's dream burned away in that heat, and Yuugi's mind finally focused on nothing beyond the physical sensations his friend could illicit from his body.

Ryou slid a finger along Yuugi's perinium and he squirmed slightly in discomfort, too dry, too much rub. He whined softly as Ryou's mouth backed off and cracked open his eyes to watch Ryou lean over the side of his bed and grab at the strap of his school bag. He dug inside of it and pulled out a change purse; the dark blue one that lived at the bottom of his bag, buried under his books, not the light green one that held change.

He flicked the purse open and pulled out a condom and a plastic, single-use tube of synthetic lubricant, before snapping it shut again and tossing it carelessly to the floor. Yuugi shut his eyes again as Ryou crouched over him, listening to the sound of wrappers being torn and then keened softly when slick fingers glided over sensitive flesh and rubbed against his sphincter. Ryou's tongue licked up the underside of his erection and he took Yuugi into his mouth again as he started working his fingers past the band of muscle.

Yuugi panted and mewled under the double onslaught of the hot mouth around his aching erection and the fingers sliding inside of him, rubbing up against his prostate. All thoughts of loss or despondence were pushed aside as he tried to focus on holding back an orgasm, not losing it too fast.

Ryou's fingers and mouth retreated and Yuugi lay still, panting helplessly and keeping his eyes shut, waiting. He spread his legs out wider when hands slid under his hips, lifting him, vaguely curious as to why Ryou had apparently decided to take him from the front, and then his breath caught in his throat as Ryou entered him with a soft grunt.

Ryou was generally quiet during sex, most of his sounds stemming from harsh panting rather than proper vocalization, but Yuugi started moaning through closed-lips like he usually did at this stage. His hands fisted in the blankets under him and his teeth clenched and he whined and moaned as their bodies rocked together in hypnotic rhythm.

The pressure kept building and Yuugi's moans became shorter and shriller until he was plunging over the edge into orgasm, his mouth coming open, keening loudly as he went. He felt Ryou following him, making only a soft, stuttering whine as he thrust into Yuugi a few more times.

Soon they were panting helplessly, trying to catch their breath, which Yuugi found particularly difficult today because Ryou had collapsed on top of him. He didn't try to nudge his friend off; the feeling of a warm body pressing against him, covering him and weighing him down, was more important than breathing normally. After a few minutes, Ryou seemed to regain cognition enough to realize on his own that he was smothering Yuugi and he rolled to the side.

The heat faded a little and Yuugi rolled over as well, pressing back into Ryou, although now on his side so that nobody was being squished. Ryou's arms came up around him and held him there as Yuugi tucked his head under his friend's chin. It was babyish, clingy, the way he needed so badly to be held, but Ryou never commented on it, and Yuugi had a suspicion that he liked it. It was another quirk Yuugi had noticed since they started this that made him wonder about the complexities of Ryou's relationship with his shadow, the way he was so comfortable in a nurturing role.

Yuugi's shadow had been the protector, and Yuugi would have thought, because of his aggressive nature, it would have been the same for Ryou's shadow. The darkness is the anger, pride and fighting spirit, the light is the empathy, sensitivity, reflection. From what he'd seen on his own, that status quo had seemed consistent for Ryou and his shadow.

'_Not really,'_ Ryou had told Yuugi a few months ago when he'd ventured to ask about the Thief. _'He was more like a schizophrenic. He'd be raging one minute and then terrified the next because of something the voices in his head told him. What you saw was him at his most functional.'_

He'd described himself as being an anchor for his shadow, and that had felt right to Yuugi, not as a hindering force but a tether to... something. The capacity for soft emotions like sympathy or calm? Ryou said he kept the Thief from wandering too far into his insanity, past the point of no return, and providing safe harbor when his shadow was unable to cope with the world around him or the one within him.

He provided stability, structure.

Yuugi was immeasurably grateful for that structure; for Ryou's calm rationality and ability to be unmoved by the words or actions of people around him. Positive or negative. He couldn't be flattered or pandered to, he couldn't be hurt. Yuugi clung to that strength; the strength he'd lost when he'd lost his shadow.

Yuugi slid his arm up under Ryou's and behind his shoulder-blade, pulling their bodies a little closer together. He was trembling, although he still felt quite warm in the post-coitus heat. After a minute, Ryou asked, "Are you crying?"

"S-sorta," Yuugi mumbled. There weren't tears, but there was the trembling and a tight knot in his chest.

"Was it that good?" Ryou joked, but his voice lacked amusement or anything but a tired bleakness.

"C-can you stay over tonight?" Yuugi mumbled, feeling childish and ashamed at the request.

"It's a school-night," Ryou noted softly. "Your mom won't mind?"

Yuugi shook his head. "She l-likes having you h-here. She gets all m-mad about you living al-lone."

Ryou let out a light snort that sounded like it had been meant to become a chuckle but couldn't muster the energy. "She's kind of a mother-hen, isn't she." He sighed, sounding so tired, like he always seemed to lately. "... Sure."

The trembling seemed to get washed away and Yuugi managed to relax a little against Ryou. "Th-thanks," he whispered.

"No problem," Ryou replied and Yuugi knew it was a half-truth; it was inconvenient, but Ryou didn't like being alone any more than Yuugi did. He sometimes thought that Ryou hated going home.

What they had wasn't a romance so much as a camaraderie, the bond of two people who each knew what the other had been through because they'd experienced it themselves. Their relationships with their shadows had been drastically different, but the loss and the sudden feeling of being only half a soul was the same. They didn't love each other, not the way they had loved their other halves; that was certain. But they needed each other, because it took two halves to make a whole. Even if they didn't match, at least the quantity would be right.

...

...

Cultural notes:

The sex might have seemed kind of one-sided from a Western perspective, but remember that most sexual behavior is cultural. In Japanese sexual culture, during sex there is an active partner and a passive partner, and that's the norm in both heterosexual and homosexual sex. Depending on the relationship, those roles can be switched up now and again (although they are traditionally gender-linked, or within same-sex couples it would be based on age or assigned masculine and feminine roles within the relationship.)

I wonder if my anatomical vocabulary is rather too text-booky, I don't really like using slang for sex-bits unless it seems like what the view-point character would use. I actually think Yuugi would kind of shy away from any words relating to sex-bits, and really, it would be kind of weird and out of the cultural norm if he didn't hide behind vague allusions and avoid any kind of directness on the subject.

Also note that change-purses are not considered girly in Japan, they're where you keep change, so most people have them (if you read/watch Naruto, you've probably noticed that he carries one.) Although I don't know whether anyone would use a change-purse to carry sex-supplies; it just struck me as the practical kind of thing Ryou would do.

Further notes:

Oh, and because I'm fairly sure somebody was confused and didn't recognize the word, the perinium is the strip of flesh between the genitals and the anus (significantly longer on males,) and it's an erogenous zone. I know it's not common parlance, but I've never heard any slang term for it and it's kind of an important area that gets overlooked a lot.

I wrote this all in one sitting, about twenty minutes after I'd gotten the idea in the first place. This is... a lot faster and more spontaneous than I usually work. The story just kind of flowed out naturally, which was very refreshing, particularly since writing sex usually takes me a while, with long periods of staring blankly at the screen between each paragraph. Maybe it was a little easier because I decided on it being pretty formulaic sex and not trying to 'spice it up' with any purple-prose or sexual spontaneity or anything.

After initially posting it though, Sefina and Lady Blackwell pointed out a couple places where I'd used words that were too charged and were giving the sentence an angstier meaning than I'd wanted. So I ret-conned, yeah I'm a cheater, and changed it by about 200 words I think...

So anyway, please comment or review or whatever, I really appreciate hearing from you guys and I'm always happy to respond to any questions or poking.


End file.
